Between Realism and Avant-garde

A Journey into Russian Impressionism

The MAN presents, for the first time in Sardinia and the only venue in Italy, Between Realism and Avant-garde. A journey into Russian Impressionism. Works from the State Museum of St. Petersburg.

The exhibition illustrates a journey through Russian painting at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century through an important selection of works from the collection of the State Museum of St. Petersburg which tell the specificity of Russian impressionism in relation to the French one, highlighting its peculiarities linked to native culture and tradition.

The event, born from an idea by Cristiana Collu, director of the MAN, and curated by Marta Sierra, is created with the co-production of the Fundavò la Caixa of Girona and represents a unique opportunity to understand the importance of the impressionist movement in Russia and meet little-known artists in our country. The texts in the catalog are written by Vladimir Leniashin and Natalia Novosilzov, the latter author of important studies on all Russian painting from the 12th to the 20th century and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Although Impressionism is traditionally identified as a French artistic movement of the late 19th century, it is known to have spread to several European and American countries. Russian artists, especially those who received scholarships from the Parisian workshops and academies, were no strangers to this influence which they actually welcomed and modified on the basis of their personal sensitivity and culture. Russian impressionism has its origins in realism, starting from 1870, when painters such as Repin or Pojitonov, in an attempt to bring art closer to life, began to play with light in their canvases and used impressionist techniques to enrich painting with realism, giving life to what is commonly defined as “realist impressionism”.

However, there was not yet full awareness among artists that this was a new way of seeing art. And furthermore, the visual autonomy of Impressionism, its disregard of traditional humanistic problems and the passionate way of painting, were interpreted as a sort of renunciation of the noble ideals of the Enlightenment, sowing doubts and anxiety among the public and critics.

If during the 1870s impressionism in Russia was a latent movement at the service of realism, in the following decade it became an autonomous artistic current with its own ethics and aesthetics, whose fathers were Vasiliev, Serov and Grabar, all represented in this exhibition. The traditional signs of impressionist painting: the light tones, the free brushstroke, the shadows and the fragmentation of colors, are found in the work of many artists, such as Borisov-Musatov, Levitan and Feshin. Russian impressionism, however, goes beyond exclusively plastic and technical issues: the painters, in their works, talk about everyday life.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the creative and impressionist essence of Russian art flourished, which, while maintaining all the traits common to European impressionism, shaped them through its national character, presenting itself as an interesting fusion of tradition with modernity. In that same period of time, impressionism spread both among realist artists and among those who would later be protagonists of cubism and futurism. This phenomenon is observed in the post-impressionist neoprimitivism of Goncharova or the avant-garde Larionov. Malevich, in this same period, also recreated impressionist atmospheres in his work, making it a significant stage in his artistic journey. In Russia, the years covered by this exhibition were particularly rich and intense for all the arts.

Literature, dance, music, theater experienced, together with the plastic arts, a period of great transformation and creativity, with an extraordinary interaction between the different disciplines. The silver age is defined as that period of time which, according to Natalia Novosilzov, can be considered as a sort of cultural renaissance which «stood out in a particular way for the active coexistence and very intense and passionate relationship between the different branches of art, philosophy and poetry.”

Between Realism and Avant-garde

Chat Icon